1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications and, more particularly, to a method and system for allocating data bandwidth in a wireless communication system.
2. Description of Related Art
A wireless communication system, such as a wireless local area network (WLAN), typically includes a number of base station nodes that provide wireless data communication service to subscribers. Often, these systems may be arranged such that individual base station nodes can directly serve a number of subscriber nodes and can also directly communicate with one or more other base station nodes to transport subscriber data between different network locations.
For example, a wireless communication system may include a given base station node providing connectivity to a wired data network, such as the Internet. As such, subscriber nodes operating within the coverage area served directly by the given base station node may wirelessly connect to the wired data network via the given base station node. Further, to extend wired-network connectivity to other subscriber nodes that may be operating out of the serving range of the given base station, the wireless communication system may include a number of additional base station nodes to provide wireless coverage to area(s) not covered by the given base station node. The system may then be arranged such that subscriber data traffic associated with a respective one of the additional base station nodes may be wirelessly communicated between the additional base station node and the given base station node. The wireless communication between the additional base station node and the given base station node may occur over a direct wireless link or through other intermediate base station node(s).
At any point in such wireless system, thus, there might be a particular base station node that directly serves multiple nodes, at least one of which is another base station node. The other base station node can, in turn, directly serve one or more subscriber nodes and possibly a number of base station nodes. As such, the particular base station node may be required to share its bandwidth resources among any subscriber nodes that it is directly serving and subscriber data traffic communicated with the other base station node. A need, therefore, exists to intelligently allocate bandwidth at any such particular base station node.